THE FINAL THREE PERFORMANCES OF ANNA HALPRIN'S LEGENDARY WORK PARADES AND CHANGES AT BAM/PFA ACCOMPANIED BY AN EXHIBITION OF HISTORICAL SCORES, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND DOCUMENTATION OF THE WORK.

“There was no chance in Parades and Changes. Everything was done by choice, but there was freedom in choice.”- Morton Subotnick

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Berkeley, CA, December 11, 2012 - As part of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's MATRIX program, dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin performs and directs a three-night engagement of her seminal work Parades and Changes February 15, 16, and 17, 2013. The production will serve as the final performances of a work that announced the arrival of postmodern choreography when it was first performed in 1965. A special gallery exhibition, on view from February 15 through April 21, 2013, features scores, photographs, and documentation of the piece from the past forty-seven years.

Parades and Changes is an ensemble piece that exposes the process of creating the performance. The dance revolves around a special set of instructions called a “score,” which include a series of everyday tasks and rituals-unrolling giant sheets of plastic, audience interaction, tearing paper, dressing and undressing. Though nudity is a fairly common sight on dance stages today, the first New York City performance of Parades and Changes in 1967 resulted in a summons for Halprin's arrest. More recently, when dancers removed their clothes as part of a performance for Performa 09, onlookers barely batted their eyelashes.

This “ceremony of trust,” as Halprin calls it, utilizes dance as a medium for testing modes of collaboration. The elements of change, reflected in the title, extend beyond the dance to the lighting, score, and props, which also vary with each performance. This fundamental malleability of the dance has allowed it to be restaged multiple times in the past forty-seven years yet still remain relevant within the various societal, political, artistic, and physical contexts it has been performed.

Halprin's Parades and Changes opened the current BAM/PFA facility in 1970, and this final presentation of the work celebrates the history and architecture of the building as the institution prepares to move to a downtown location in late 2015. Joining Halprin for the BAM/PFA performances will be original composer, electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick, who will perform a live score, and a team of dancers from around the world.

About the artist
Anna Halprin's career has spanned the field of dance since the late 1930s. She founded the groundbreaking San Francisco Dancer's Workshop in 1955 and the Tamalpa Institute in 1978 with her daughter Daria Halprin. Her students include Meredith Monk, Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Dohee Lee, Dana Iova-Koga, Shinichi Momo Iova-Koga, Isak Immanuel, G Hoffman Soto and others. Over the years her Mountain Home Studio in Kentfield, CA has been a stage for numerous dancers and choreographers, including Merce Cunningham, Eiko and Koma, Min Tanaka, and Anne Collod; composers such as John Cage, Luciano Berio, Terry Riley, LeMonte Young, and Morton Subotnick; visual artists such as Robert Morris and Robert Whiteman; poets such as Richard Brautigan, James Broughton, and Michael McClure; and countless others. She has created 150 full-length dance theater works, and is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including a lifetime achievement in choreography from the American Dance Festival. She is the author of three books, as well as the recipient of numerous honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Dance Guild, and others. In 1997, Halprin received the Samuel H. Scripps Award for Lifetime Achievement in Modern Dance from the American Dance Festival.

Anna Halprin: Parades and Changes Schedule
Friday, February 15; 7:30 p.m.
L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA
General admission $7

Saturday, February 16; 7:30 p.m.
Included with museum admission

Sunday, February 17, 7:30 p.m.
Included with museum admission

Photography
Photography is not permitted at these performances, nor is it allowed in the exhibition gallery.

Support
Anna Halprin / MATRIX 246 is organized by Assistant Curator Dena Beard. The performances of Parades and Changes are made possible in part by The Creative Work Fund, a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund supported by generous grants from ArtPlace, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the Fleishhacker Foundation, Meyer Sound, and The Apartment, Vancouver. The performances are a fiscally sponsored project of Dancers' Group.

The MATRIX Program is made possible by a generous endowment gift from Phyllis C. Wattis and the continued support of the BAM/PFA Trustees.

L@TE is made possible in part by the continued support of the BAM/PFA Trustees. Special thanks to our media sponsors, East Bay Express and San Francisco Bay Guardian.

About L@TE
L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA is the institution's afterhours program, featuring guest programmers-as well as BAM/PFA curators-who showcase mostly local artists, musicians, filmmakers, performance artists, and other creative types resulting in a series of eclectic performance and events. Galleries are kept open until 9 p.m. Programs begin at 7:30 p.m. in Gallery B; doors open at 5 p.m.

About BAM/PFA
Founded in 1963, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is UC Berkeley's primary visual arts venue and among the largest university art museums in terms of size and audience in the United States. Internationally recognized for its art and film programming, BAM/PFA is a platform for cultural experiences that transform individuals, engage communities, and advance the local, national, and global discourse on art and ideas. BAM/PFA's mission is “to inspire the imagination and ignite critical dialogue through art and film.”

BAM/PFA presents approximately fifteen art exhibitions and 380 film programs each year. The museum's collection of over 16,000 works of art includes important holdings of Neolithic Chinese ceramics, Ming and Qing Dynasty Chinese painting, Old Master works on paper, Italian Baroque painting, early American painting, Abstract Expressionist painting, contemporary photography, and video art. Its film archive of over 14,000 films and videos includes the largest collection of Japanese cinema outside of Japan, Hollywood classics, and silent film, as well hundreds of thousands of articles, reviews, posters, and other ephemera related to the history of film, many of which are digitally scanned and accessible online.

Museum Information
Location: 2626 Bancroft Way, just below College Avenue across from the UC Berkeley campus.

Gallery and Museum Store Hours: Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Open L@TE Fridays until 9 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Information: 24-hour recorded message (510) 642-0808; fax (510) 642-4889; TDD (510) 642-8734.

Website: bampfa.berkeley.edu

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